Building a New Rig for SL, etc.

Okay, so I'm looking at getting a new computer. My current rig is somewhere in the neighborhood of three or four years old, running under 512 RAM, a decent ATI card (AGP), and 1.7ghz processor.

My hard drive is failing on my desktop, but I have a SL-ready laptop that I'm running off of at present. Figured it might be a good prompt to upgrade my main PC, though.


So the pitch: Any suggestions/testimonies/geeked-out specs you all might have to suggest to me?



Stuff I have already:
- LCD Monitor(s) with good refresh speeds. Dual monitor would be great.
- USB keyboard
- AGP video card I can canabalize
- ~$1 to 1.5k budget to throw at this.


Stuff I need that I'd like to build from:
- Motherboard
- RAM
- Hard drive
- Case
- Video card
- Sound card
- Whatever else is needed to run a tower (power supply, fan?)


Stuff it will need to do:
- Run some kind of Windows XP. Plan to avoid Vista.
- Run the current generation of games and killer apps, including SL. Have one game that requires Windows that I still run with regularity.
- Have enough video memory and RAM to render complex Blender (OpenGL) scenes in a reasonable timeframe. A gig of RAM and 256 unshared video RAM is about right.
- Minimum of four USB slots.


Stuff I would like, but isn't necessary:
- Run Linux (Mandriva, Fedora, or Ubuntu) with minimal changes.
- Run Mesa, Freeglut, and OpenGL-usable tools.
- Does NOT support the trusted computing architecture (security reasons).
- Six to eight USB slots preferable.
- PCI-express, SLi, and latest geek-dom support.
- 64-bit architecture... maybe.




I'm looking for some build suggestions if anyone here has them. I'm currently looking at Asus hardware and drooling. Anyone have any other good stuff they've seen? This will be my first "built" rig, so I'm a bit anxious on not screwing any of it up.

Thanks in advance.

So agp motherboard with 1024 ram+ ?, i have one pc wich uses this , something like that youre after?.

motherboard : ABIT UL8, Socket-939, AGP8X
cpu : 64-3500+ ,
gpu : 6800gt agp
ram : 2048
psu : 450 watt
various harddrives ,
but 1 fast 10.000 rpm for windows/progs/sl, and 7200's for games.



---- Above one is the one i gave to my mother and i played SL on it , cant say i noticed much speed diffrence from the ones under wich i use normally---

mb : Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket -939, SCP , PCI-Ex16
cpu : x2-4800
gpu : Asus 6800gt pcie 256mb
ram : 4098
psu : 500 watt

mb : ABIT KN8-SLI,nForce4 SLI, Socket-939, , PCI-Ex16
cpu : 64-3500+
gpu : Asus 6800gt pcie 256mb
ram : 2048
psu : 500 watt

Asus A8N-SLI Premium , for some reason my heatpipe on this was so much higher then cpu it died , faulty so i got a new one on warranty, Asus has a loong warranty on their items, :>

ABIT KN8-SLI , Abit dissapointed me years back, so i was kinda hesitant buying a new one, but this one is kinda crazy on temperature :>
cpu : 23.5c (74.3)
motherboard : 24c (75.2f)
(yes its kinda cold in my room at this time of year)

I dont use SLi on either of the pc's yet, dont really play games thats all about fps anymore anyhoo.

All new motherboards come with soundcard/nic inbuildt now, so that saves some $,

Im guessing you live in US ?, so i cant really dig up anything as i have no idea what webshops/stores there is there :>

Ram comes with lifetime warranty on some, handy incase of "woops"

All AMD64 cpu's comes with boxed fan , wich is bit louder then you can buy from other stores, but they work ok as 64bit cpu's hardly get warm as opposed to Intel's thats good for heaters ~.~.

Casings usually come with buildt in fan's now, but watch their powersupply, it can be bad , or great, some brands thats good where i live anyway

Lian Li
Chieftech
Yeong Yang (cubes!)
Zalman
Chenbro
i use Chenbro , big cube servercasing, one side with motherboard, other side has all drives/powersupply, and yeah they cost ~.~ , i use mine for a table :>
( http://www.chenbro.com.tw/product/product_preview.php?pid=74 )

Not a pretty case ~.o

mb : Asus A8N-SLI Premium, nForce4 SLI,Socket -939, SCP , PCI-Ex16
cpu : x2-4800
gpu : Asus 6800gt pcie 256mb
ram : 4098
psu : 500 watt

I concure except since the 7800 GT has dropped in price lately I would recommend it over the 6800gt. PCI-e is the way to go since staying with AGP will remove your ability to upgrade later without changing the motherboard. This is AGP's final generation and MB's with it are soon to be obsolete. Most all new cards come duel head DVI except for ATI All in Wonders, the have 1 DVI and a HDTV out. The AMD 4800+ X2 duel core is a good choice no doubt.

Well, Jeff, keeping your budget in mind... I recently got a system that's mostly compatible with your aims. It's actually a very archetypical system that's not wildly out of most people's pocketbooks, yet performs SL well. I did it explicitly with SL in mind.
Finetune to taste. More background here. The only big thing I might change in your case would be the CPU. My Opteron is a dual-core one and it's very nifty for lots of multitasking, many windows open at once. So this depends on personal usage. And possibly change the graphics card if you want to go for something even more budget like the 7800GS.

I don't have an LCD monitor but these parts leave room for that in your budget.

Hey, thanks! I wasn't expecting this level of quality in the responses (a good thing).


The concensus seems to be Asus SLi-ready boards, something I find quite interesting. Same for the 7-line nVidias over the 6. Also something I was weighing in my mind. Looking at getting around 2 gigs of RAM as well on a suggestion from a friend, and 450 watts of cooling power.

That helps well enough. Thanks again.

Welkies Jeff... just to clarify, tho, the Asus A8N-E I have is not the SLI variation (A8N-SLI), although it is a very popular motherboard nonetheless. I just didn't have a need for two graphics cards, and can't foresee myself wanting that in the remote future on the same computer. (By then, I probably will want to leapfrog to yet something else.)

I just orderd my new system for SL:

Shuttle SN25P (nforce4 motherboard, PCI-x, SATA)
2.0 GB Ram (Corsair XMS 2-3-3-6 timings) PC3200
7800GT /w 256 (pci x16)
250 3.0gb/s SATA hdd
Lite-ON DVD+-R/RW DL
Athlon 64 3800 (2.2ghz)